The Widow's Son

by Daniel Kemp

  “The senior sergeant said he believed the colonel was in Chechnya planning an attack with those Islamic militants somewhere in the Caucuses, General Razin. He was about to report that suspicion to your department in the Federal Security Service.”

  “Was he?” Razin shouted at the communication equipment in the concrete underground bunker beneath the Russian Consulate at Notting Hill Gate. Whilst his voice was still rebounding from the four walls he picked up the secure satellite link to the Russian Defence Attaché's office in Highgate West Hill.

  “Has there been any reports concerning the Turkmenistan militarised compound on the shore of the Aral Sea? In specific, the chemical arsenal?” he asked without any niceties.

  Twenty minutes later he had the negative answer he was worried about. Once again he dialled the number of Patrick West's burner phone. There was no answer. There was more desire for urgency this Thursday morning than any other, but suspicions could not be aroused in Moscow. All must go on as before. No alterations to the schedule, no changes in the mannerisms nor destinations. At 11am Thursday he left the Consulate and the eyes began to follow. All went as normal until he entered the Silver Vaults. It was there, beyond the watchers, that he started his meltdown sequence. Inside the safe deposit box he kept, on the second underground level in Chancery Lane, he'd hidden his collection of passports and identification documents, along with bank cards, cash in dollars and the three throwaway mobile phones. He put what he needed into those giant pockets of his coat, joining his copy of the one-time code book for the coming two weeks that he had taken from his own office at the Consulate.

  In total he ran twenty-one groupings of agents spying for the reasons Razin gave them. Eleven cells throughout Europe and the Middle East, a further five in North America and the same number in South America and although all were autonomous and well protected if, as he suspected, Fraser Ughert had been murdered then that cast them all into danger and more so—himself. There was no little black book containing nexus couplings related to signals of decamp—run—hide, the next stop is the firing squad. Each group was different. Made up with different numbers. Had different Numero Unos. Some were calm mannered men or women. Some were jumpy. If he sent the alert cue all would be frightened. All would scatter, never to be trusted until he found each one of them and systematically killed each one.

  I could be overreacting. Maybe old Fraser's heart did finally gave out on him. The fuss they would mount would be the same as if he had been murdered. West must be busy, but—why too busy for me? I will give him the benefit of the doubt and wait till Saturday midday, he decided in silent contemplation.

  * * *

  By the time I regained my office seat that Saturday morning after speaking to Razin from the tunnel, Hannah had more calls on hold than the number of hot meals I'd eaten since being appointed head of Group. I had more pressing things to do. I next telephoned Fraser.

  “What was his reaction when you told him that the original Gladio B document had been destroyed?” he asked in a severely agitated voice.

  “He said he didn't care because very soon all hell was about to be launched on America and we all would probably die in the aftermath of retaliation.”

  That's when I told him about the weaponised anthrax and phosphorous shells Razin believed to be in the hands of a militant separatist Jihadist group who were supplied by a mad Russian colonel whose only son was killed in an American air strike on a mujahideen strike force in Afghanistan in October 2001. Fraser was silent for a while and I worried that this time he really might die of a heart attack, but he seemed to sense my concern, asking me to continue to tell what Razin had said. I obeyed him.

  The colonel was discharged from the army a month after his son's death following the shooting of two American tourists near his home village of Listvyanka in the mountainous Russian region of Siberia, who were hiking along paths called the Great Baikal Trail. The American government were told that the colonel was mentally unstable and would be locked up for life. That was a lie of course. He was sent to Dagestan where he had family and it was there his son converted to Islam. Not a word of the incident was reported by the international press. The local authorities informed the parents that it had been an unfortunate accident and when asked for the bodies to be flown home, were conveniently told that as the lake was one of the deepest in the world and there would be no possibility of any recovered bodies. They had no choice but to accept that explanation.

  “Where's the target, Patrick?” Fraser eventually asked.

  “If Razin knows he's not telling me. All he's saying is it will be an American target. He added a rather salient specific. The Iraqis are equipped with American M114 howitzers. Those artillery pieces fire the same calibre of shells that are missing. They have a kill range of roughly twenty miles. Be that as it may, Razin's Federal Security Service has intelligence of a new Iraqi supergun based around the original Gerald Bull's design. It was built in a factory in Italy and arrived in Beirut three weeks ago. If that information is correct, and Razin is confident that it is, then Saddam Hussein's army has the capability of firing United Nations banned toxic chemicals and incendiary munitions for hundreds if not thousands of miles.”

  “I'm not ignoring any of that but it's way too high for me to pass comment on. That's for Oliver Nathan and the PM to deal with. But what did he say after you told him what I asked; Henry Mayler had seen inside the first Gladio B file, laddie?”

  “Nothing, Fraser. The line went dead.”

  Chapter Seventeen: Kirkuk

  Frank had been backwards and forth to Peckham using all three exit tunnels from The Hole and hopping from bus to bus on his Friday journeys to Fraser. The files and signals I'd successfully drawn from the Deferrals department for Fraser had been, so Frank told me, useful. High praise indeed from Mr Ughert. When I spoke to Molly on the telephone she had carried on with her role in the duplicity brilliantly and had I been a critic at a West End show I would have given her a best actress award for the performance. Somehow or other I had managed the impossible in keeping Fraser's feigned death and location a complete secret from the investigating Ministry of Defence and Special Branch agents as well as the heads of the various intelligence departments who had asked. As a bonus, no overseas service had heard a whisper. But good things never last, do they? This was one that could never be kept secret for long. Michael Simmons sent three of his lamp-burners to walk the block around number 67 Lavington Street for me with four more trailing behind at set distances and working their way wider. 'Nothing suspicious' was the shared analysis of the experts. No marked cars on the route and nothing parked that looked questionable. With the foot traffic it was a different matter, but we left two of the lamp-burners at each end of Lavington Street with radios to signal if they saw anything dubious. I was oblivious to the sleeting rain on the short walk away from number 67 to the car that Saturday lunchtime, itching with nervous energy as Jimmy put the car into gear and with Frank back beside him we pulled away, driving south towards Peckham.

  * * *

  On the bare-wooded dining table in the Peckham flat Fraser had six phones spread out in front of himself, each with a written label stuck on it. I saw the one dedicated to Molly and the one marked Group. The other markings were just numbers that meant something to only him I guessed, but I was wrong in that assumption. Ignoring my presence, Suzanna seemed to coast into the room with another numbered marked phone, placing it on the table with the others, then announcing that the call she had just taken was from someone called Nola who was a she. Apparently Nola could confirm whatever it was Fraser had asked. I sat opposite him and without looking at Suzanna, asked for a coffee. I stared straight at Fraser and lit a Dunhill cigarette.

  “Do you take anything for that?” Suzanna asked and I thought she referred to my rudeness.

  “If I did would you like me to share it with you?” I replied scornfully.

  “I haven't got nerve damage to my right leg as you do, Mr West. I would also add tha
t both your knees are showing wear because of the strain your right foot is putting on them. If I had it as bad as you do I would seek medical help, especially in your position and as it's free in this country. If I was in Armenia I'd have a cure for you, or at least a remedy to ease the pain. It's more likely the cold and damp that makes the pain worse. Good morning by the way, Patrick.”

  I was in acute discomfort from my foot to the top of my thigh, but how did she know? I silently asked as I returned her belated greeting.

  “Can we put any confrontation out of the way, please? Today is not the day.” Fraser looked at us both with a stern and angry frown.

  “Make it two coffees, Suzanna, please. I'll have another.” Suzanna left and he addressed me in an edgy manner.

  “How does Razin know that this Russian colonel acquired the anthrax and the ammunitions then passed it all on to this Islamic Jihadist group; Shariat Jamaat?”

  “Are you okay, Fraser? You seem unusually irritated this morning. Suzanna and I were only establishing rank. It would appear that neither of us wants to share you. How's that angina of yours doing? You know you can't get yourself over-stressed. That will kill you for real and we'll be having Molly to deal with. Where will all of us be then?”

  “Have you spoken to Molly this morning as she was saying much the same an hour ago? Suzanna's as bad! I'm not having it from you as well. Answer my damn question, laddie, before I scream and swear at you in Gaelic.”

  “Phew, excuse me for coming and showing concern, Mr Ughert, sir. If that's what you want then here goes. Razin said this colonel was the last commanding officer of the base. He signed the manifest when they sealed the doors and first concreted over the place. It was opened up under orders from the Kremlin because of a radio transmission that was intercepted from the Kurdish Democratic Party alleging the Iraqi nuclear power programme had restarted. The plant bombed by Israelis jets in 1980, was not being rebuilt, but a new one on a site near Kirkuk was underway. In a second part of that signal it went on to allege that an ex-Russian colonel had sold the whereabouts of a number of classified weapons to a member of the Dagestan-based Shariat Jamaat dissident group who had connections to the Kurds. The Shariat Jamaat group had insufficient means of transport for the quantity of weapons available so the information was sold on to a member of the Ba'ath Party of Iraq. The intercepted transmission was examined by Razin who passed it on to the Nuclear Registration Department within the Kremlin, who sent engineers and inspectors to the Aral Sea site to maintain the stability of the forgotten two kilograms of highly enriched uranium fuel stored twelve hundred feet underground that in theory, nobody could access. The uranium, although untouched, was airlifted to a safer site that Razin did not disclose. It was then that the manifest was checked and came up short.”

  Fraser sat shaking his head in disbelief. He reached for the glass of water that was on the oblong table beside his pipe and reading glasses, then withdrew two blister packets of pills from a pocket on the side of his heavy woollen sweater. He broke two tablets from each then swallowed them with a mouthful of water.

  “That's Russia for you, Patrick,” he declared, coinciding with a coffee-transporting Suzanna. “Totally unorganised!”

  “If ever they got their game together then best we all look to Heaven for our salvation as nobody will be safe,” Suzanna added as she found places on the cluttered table for our cups. She hadn't finished with helpful advice.

  “Here, I found some painkillers in my bag. Take two whenever you need them.” She held out an unmarked packet of tablets which I hesitantly took. She mocked me with a soft deriding chuckle.

  “If I wanted to harm you, Mr West, I would not be as obvious. They will kill your pain, but nothing else.” Her laugh was louder as she left to join Frank in another room where I could hear a television on.

  “We can't keep this information to ourselves, Fraser, but that will mean disclosing our tie-up with Razin. There's no way we can hide that.”

  “Then ultimately we don't, laddie! He's almost served his purpose. We have access now to the second file. I can't pull that up whilst I'm here. If I do then that will send my whereabouts to all those that want to know including Razin's Federal Security Service. Nor can you pull it up. Not just yet.” He stopped speaking, rose from his chair and walked towards the window overlooking the empty, sodden park beneath.

  “Grey, Patrick. The worst colour God invented and the Russian nation adopted it with Lenin and his cronies. I'm not saying the Tsar was any bloody better, because his lot were not. But eff me. A land of soulful poets and artists crushed under Communism. I honestly despair. America is no answer. They are rash, disdainful, unaware and uncaring of anything or anyone beyond their confines. Those descriptions could stand for the UN as well. So who's left? Us? The French? The Germans? No, there's only one thing that the world desires and that's oil. That's all anyone cares about. We would kill each other for it. In fact, I believe we will. It's Iraq this inner circle of eight are after first. I think they will flex their muscles with that one. Then possibly Saudi Arabia, after all they are the world's biggest producers and America are the world's biggest uses. That won't stay that way for long. You wait until India, Brazil and then the giant of China awake to democracy and want cars and industrialisation. Guess who will want to supply the oil needed for that huge market.”

  “Where did all that come from, Fraser? What have you found from the files Frank delivered?”

  “What have I found, well that's a question and a half? Incidentally, you have two good men in Frank and your station officer, Michael Simmons you said his name was. Look after them, loyalty is a dying commodity in this screwed up world.”

  “You are in a bad mood. Is there something apart from Razin's news that's set you off?”

  “When I was Chairman of Joint Intelligence everything that landed on Sir John Scarlett's desk at 6 came over to me. We shared an asset in Turkey that you helped reunite. The logistical officer you secreted away on a flight out from Northolt to Cyprus, is one half of that agent, the other half being his fake wife in Gaziantep, Turkey. I had shared some of her intel with Razin just enough for him to put his nose in the trough and hunt around a bit. He did, and I expect he's told you what he found out. However, if he hasn't I will. Our Mrs Ratcliffe, that's the cover name, has kept herself busy, this time with an attaché from the Israeli Embassy. To abridge that message which I saw this morning, it seems one part of a CIA special forces network, known to Mossad Intel Centre as G3, is in readiness to land at the place you mentioned as the site of Iraqis' nuclear power project—Kirkuk. Now that could be to blow the place up, but I think that's a non-starter. It could mean they want to authenticate the information, yes, possible, but unlikely, or it could and probably does mean, they want ground level intelligence to mark the site for an airdrop. This CIA special forces group G3 exists, Patrick. The intel Mrs Ratcliffe got, stands up. But it leaves a question that's unanswered at the moment, why American special forces and not Israeli? Where are they going launch this drop from? It will be highly embarrassing for any Islamic nation or Israel.

  “There's one man inside American intelligence that I trust. I mentioned him sometime back; Robert Zaehner. It was he Liam Catlin met before sending the Tickled Pink communiqué. He was at the scene of Gladio B's destruction to make sure an accurate copy was taken. He knows full well the ramifications of us holding that recorded file. The fact that he has to trust us is neither here nor there. He could have tried to get his hands on our copy but he didn't. The only copy of the file is in the diplomatic bag winging its way here. It's addressed to Director General Group, Craig Court, Whitehall. Harwood never goes there now, Patrick, and he never checks if any bags go there. Why not, laddie? Because nobody goes there anymore. But you will go and show your face in order to collect it.”

  “Which reminds me, when are you going to resurface and show your face?”

  “As soon as I possibly can, but that might mean you doing Christmas without any knowing wi
nks at Molly.”

  * * *

  “When this is all over, sir, you should write a book titled The First Nine Days. I know the Official Secrets Act won't allow you to do that, but you could change your name and then who would know?”

  I had finished briefing Hannah on the situation regarding the Gladio B files, Fyodor Nazarov Razin and Henry Mayler when she suggested the book under a pseudonym. Solomon was smiling sitting beside her and I was picturing them together away from this life of deceit-filled misery. They looked suited to each other. I had come a long way since leaving my Canary Wharf apartment and my sedentary undisturbed life of referees' whistles. The puerile thoughts I'd had on being released into a life where an attractive woman was my almost constant companion had been replaced by a more mature approach to life. The irony of my graduation into maturity compared to Fraser Ughert's regress into something akin to senility did not escape me. How did he expect to return from the dead and what would be the excuse he gave to his peers?

  Chapter Eighteen: It's a Mess

  Group had a long and distinguished past, beginning its journey sometime in the middle of the years that spanned the First World War inside a building at the end of a cul-de-sac called Craig Court at the Trafalgar Square end of Whitehall. To the naked eye the building that closed off the short unremarkable street was a plain bricked one with no doorway and higher windows than street level. That was how it was meant to look to the casual eye, because on the other side of those red bricks and windows with standard issue civil service, over-sized net-curtaining was the eight inches of concrete, lined by seamless steel, secret establishment that only those who had need of its services knew how to get in. The main entrance was through another government department, now called The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. There was though another way into Group's offices; through the linked myriad of underground tunnels emanating from all the state offices along Whitehall arriving at one central security post. That post and the one dividing the Department for the Environment etc. of the UK from a shady organisation that helped the UK to have an environment both kept digitalised log books. As chairman of JIC I had every right to examine them, but the way Fraser phrased his comment about Craig Court not taking deliveries nowadays, had left me with reservations about visiting the place to acquire the memory stick of Gladio B. I requested those log books and set the staffers at Group to check on visits made by Geoffrey Harwood and Fraser Ughert from November last year.